Programme · The Practice of Study

Study Circles.

A study circle is the smallest unit of Sikhiyas. Three to fifteen Sikhiyasis and Friends gathering, in person or online, to read closely, think together, and walk away with a question they did not arrive with. The cohort programmes are the visible part of the work; the study circles are the slow, distributed, year-round engine that makes the cohorts possible.

I. What A Study Circle Is

A Sikhiyas study circle is a small standing group that meets at a regular cadence — weekly, fortnightly, or monthly — to study a defined text, a tradition, or a practical discipline together. The group has a named convener, a published reading list for the term, an agreed cadence, and an open seat for anyone who has declared as a Sikhiyasi or registered as a Friend or Ally.

Circles are deliberately small. Three is enough — the original Sangat began with three. Fifteen is the upper bound for a circle that wants to remain a circle and not become a lecture. Beyond fifteen, we ask conveners to spawn a second circle rather than to grow the first.

What a study circle is not: a lecture series, a course with examinations, a religious instruction class, or a debating society. The Sangat-style discipline of speaking when one has something useful to say and listening fully when one does not is the working principle. Conveners hold that discipline; they do not lead in the conventional sense.

II. The Three Streams

Every Sikhiyas study circle works within one of three streams. A circle may stay in one stream for years, or rotate between streams across terms. The choice is the circle's own.

Stream One — Sikhi

Direct study of the Sikh tradition: Gurbani read closely in Gurmukhi and English, Janamsakhis and historical sources, the long lineage of Bhai and Bibi commentary, contemporary Sikh scholarship, and the open questions our tradition is still working out in our own century. This stream forms the backbone of most circles in their first year, and is the one we recommend new circles begin with.

Within Stream One, sub-foci that run as identifiable threads include Japji Sahib close reading, Sukhmani Sahib in seasonal cycle, the social and political vision of the Gurus (Halemi Raj, Begampura, Miri-Piri), the philosophy of Naam and the ontology of Hukam, and Sikh history through primary sources — particularly the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Stream Two — Comparative

Reading the Sikh tradition in conversation with other traditions — not to relativise it, and not to dilute it, but to deepen our own understanding by sitting honestly with the questions other traditions have asked. Bhakti poetry and the wider Indic devotional tradition (Ravidas and Kabir are already in the Guru Granth Sahib; reading them more widely follows naturally). The Sufi tradition, particularly the strands that the Gurus engaged with directly. The Stoic tradition for its discipline of inner posture. The Quaker tradition for its practice of silence in Sangat. Contemporary moral philosophy where it touches our questions.

Stream Two is offered as conceptual Daswandh in two directions: we read other traditions as guests in their texts, and we offer our own readings into the wider conversation through the GlobalPEACE network. Circles in this stream sometimes invite friends from other traditions to convene a session — that is welcome, structured by mutual care, and reciprocated when our friends invite us.

Stream Three — Practical

The disciplines of organising, leadership, public action, and institution-building — read both through Sikh sources (the Misl system as a study in distributed governance, Langar as a study in egalitarian logistics, Sarbat Khalsa as a study in deliberative assembly) and through the contemporary literature of community organising, movement strategy, conflict resolution, and ethical leadership. This stream prepares Sikhiyasis for the work the cohorts and field placements will hand them.

Stream Three works best when at least one circle member has practical responsibility for organising work in their own city or workplace, so the reading can be tested against actual conditions. Pure theory does not earn its place in this stream; the test is whether the reading changes how a member acts in the room they are already in.

III. How A Circle Runs

The architecture of a typical Sikhiyas study circle:

• CadenceWeekly, fortnightly, or monthly. Most circles run fortnightly. The cadence stays consistent through a term.
• TermThree months, four times a year — calendared loosely on the cohort calendar. Each term has a defined reading list.
• LengthNinety minutes is the working norm. Longer drifts; shorter rushes.
• ConvenerA named Sikhiyasi who has held a circle seat for at least two terms before convening their own. Conveners are not teachers.
• ReadingPre-circulated, agreed at the start of each term. Each member reads before the meeting; the meeting is for the conversation, not the recap.
• FormatOpening Ardas if the convener wishes, brief framing, close reading of a defined passage, structured discussion, closing reflection.
• NotesOne member rotates as the term's Lekhak (chronicler) and circulates short notes after each meeting — not minutes, but a sense of where the conversation went.
• Open seatEvery circle keeps at least one open seat for a new attendee at every meeting. New attendees are introduced, given context, and welcomed without ceremony.

IV. Local And Online

Sikhiyas study circles run in two modes, and the architecture of each is genuinely different rather than one being a substitute for the other.

Local circles meet in person — typically in a Gurdwara langar-hall side room, a member's home, a community centre, or a university chaplaincy. They benefit from shared meals, shared Sangat beyond the circle itself, and the slow trust that builds across years of seeing the same faces in the same room. Local circles are listed by city on the Sikhiyas internal directory, not on the public website, to protect the small-group character of the circles themselves.

Online circles meet by video at a fixed weekly or fortnightly slot, typically in two-hour sessions to allow for the slower rhythm of online conversation. They serve Sikhiyasis in geographies without a critical mass for a local circle, and they bring together members across continents in ways a local circle cannot. The current online circles, by stream and language, are listed in the Pran Letter issued quarterly to declared Sikhiyasis.

Many Sikhiyasis sit in both — a local circle for primary practice, an online circle for cross-geographical thinking. We commend that pattern when it is sustainable; we do not impose it.

V. How To Join An Existing Circle

If a Sikhiyas study circle exists in your city or in your time zone, the route in is simple: declare as a Sikhiyasi (or register as a Friend or Ally), receive your regional coordinator's contact in the welcome reply, and ask which circles are currently open for new attendees. Most circles have rolling capacity; some have waiting lists at the start of a new term and open seats mid-term as members rotate.

You are not asked to commit to attendance for the full term before your first meeting. The first meeting is yours to attend without obligation. Most members make the term-commitment after their second or third meeting, when they know what the circle is and whether it suits them.

VI. How To Start A Circle

If no Sikhiyas circle yet exists where you are, and you have held a seat in another circle for at least two terms, you may convene one. The route is:

1. Write to the Membership Office (hello@sikhiyas.org with subject line Study Circle convener enquiry) declaring the geography or online time-slot, the proposed stream, and your prior circle history.
2. A short call with a senior convener follows — not an interview, but a conversation about what you want to convene and why this term.
3. You receive the Convener's Pack: the recommended-readings library by stream, the format template, the Lekhak guidance, the safeguarding note for circles that may include under-eighteens, and the introductory letter to send to prospective members.
4. Your circle is added to the internal directory at the start of the next term, with capacity, contact, and meeting cadence published.

For Sikhiyasis who have not yet held a seat in another circle but who are in a geography where no circle exists, an alternative route opens: a Seed Circle — a circle of three Sikhiyasis convened jointly with light support from a senior convener elsewhere, who joins the first three meetings remotely, after which the seed circle stands on its own. The Seed Circle pathway is how most new geographies actually begin.

VII. The Convener's Practice

The convener is not the teacher of the circle. The convener is the keeper of the room — the practice that holds, more than the content that fills it. The discipline of convening is, in our experience, this:

• Hold the cadence. Meet on the published date even when only three of you can come, and let the missing be missed.
• Hold the silence. The first thirty seconds of a question are often the most important; do not fill them.
• Hold the open seat. Every meeting, name and welcome the newest member as if they have always been there.
• Hold yourself out of the centre. The convener's voice is one voice among the rest, not the answer to which the rest are responses.
• Hold the Guru. Open with Ardas when the room invites it; close with the line that the term's reading is leading you toward.

Conveners gather, twice a year, in a national or international convener gathering — once online in February, once in person at the Kangra campus in November alongside the annual Sikhiyas Sangat. The gathering is where curriculum is rebuilt, conveners are mentored, and the practice is renewed. It is the most important pedagogical event in the Sikhiyas calendar.

VIII. The Question Of Reading Lists

Sikhiyas does not impose a single reading list across all circles. The circles are local, the contexts vary, and the Sangat in front of you knows what it needs. What Sikhiyas does provide, through the Convener's Pack, is a recommended library — many hundreds of titles across the three streams, in English, Punjabi, Hindi, and a growing number of other languages, with brief notes on how each text has worked in practice.

A circle may use the recommended library wholesale, mix it with local choices, or build its own list from scratch. The only constraint we hold is that Gurbani sits at the centre of every Stream One circle and is present, even if briefly, in every Stream Two and Stream Three meeting. Without that anchor, the circle is studying something — but it is no longer a Sikhiyas study circle.

IX. Friends, Allies, And The Open Door

Study circles are open to Sikhiyasis (Tier One) and to registered Friends and Allies (Tier Two). For Friends and Allies, the welcome is unconditional in the room, but the reading and conversation will assume Sikh-tradition centring; we ask Friends to come ready to learn into a tradition that is not their own, in the same spirit in which we hope to be welcomed into theirs when we accept their invitations.

For young people who have not yet declared and are exploring whether Sikhiyas suits them, an open meeting is held by most circles once per term — typically the first or last meeting — at which prospective members can attend without commitment, hear what the term has held, and decide whether to come forward.

X. The Long Arc

The cohort programmes are visible. The field placements are visible. The Pran is visible. The study circles, by design, are the least visible part of the Sikhiyas architecture — and the most consequential. They are where a Sikhiyasi's relationship to the tradition becomes the work of a decade rather than a season, where conveners are trained who will hold the next century of Sikhiyas, and where the questions the cohorts cannot answer in three months get the slow attention they need.

If you find yourself drawn to the cohorts, write to the Diaspora Office. If you find yourself drawn to the circles, write to the Membership Office. If you are drawn to both, write to whichever feels most ready in you today, and the rest will arrive in time.